The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 1

Bucky’s Bucket List

In a neat bit of parallelism with Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes has compiled his own bucket list. Except where Steve’s list had names of songs, books, and movies post-1945, Bucky’s list has a list of names of those he wishes to make amends with… or bring to justice. Most of those names are also Marvel-related Easter Eggs.

Some names, such as “L Kaminski” and “S Whitaker” are references towards comic book creators Len Kaminski and Steve Whitaker. Other names like “A Rostov” refer to Marvel Comics villains. In this case, there’s an “Andre Rostov,” a Soviet Union general known as The Red Barbarian who was an enemy of Iron Man. He was also Bucky’s handler when he was still The Winter Soldier.

The real name to pay attention to, however, is “H Zemo.” As in Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), the main villain from Captain America: Civil War (2016) who will also appear later in the series. That makes Bucky’s list not only a key component for exploring his character, it’s also crucial to the plot of the entire season.

The Flag-Smashers?

“New World Order” also introduces us to series’ primary antagonists, the Flag Smashers, a group of terrorists who believe the world was better after Thanos snapped away half the population. They also have super-soldier-like abilities and (unbeknownst to the good guys) are actually led by one Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman). Of course, this is different from the source material, though not as much as you might think.

In the comics, the first Flag Smasher was one Karl Morgenthau who, after his diplomat father died in a riot, decided there shouldn’t be any countries. He would then create his own organization, The Underground Liberated Totally Integrated Mobile Army To Unite Mankind, or ULTIMATUM for short. He also didn’t have super powers, relying instead on high-tech gadgets and martial arts. Basically, think V from V For Vendetta, only with better toys and without the Guy Fawkes mask.

There were also three other Flag-Smashers, all of whom were members of ULTIMATUM, who took up their leader’s cause. The second Flag-Smasher was one Guy Thierrault, who made his debut during Marvel Comics’ Civil War event. And because being an anarchist is an occupational hazard, Guy was killed by one of his own ULTIMATUM agents, who then took up the Flag-Smasher mantle for himself, until he, in turn, was also killed. The last Flag-Smasher in the comics ended up being a Life Model Decoy of Dr. Erik Selvig.